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A short critique of Stallmanism

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Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#141

Post by jcora »

spangry wrote: post #110
throwaway729 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many criticisms of the various freedoms embodied by Stallmanism's notion of free software (to borrow a term from the article). A thorough rebuttal of the entire viewpoint requires, IMO: 1. An ardent defense of capitalism and private property. 2. A critique of open source as a superior software development methodology. You'll find shades of (1) in various defenses of competing open source licenses (e.g. BSD)…

Why would (1) be necessary? GPL software is not consigned to the public domain or ownership automatically transferred to the FSF. It is still the property of the original developer, who are simply distributing and licensing its use only to those who comply with a certain set of conditions. Proprietary licences will sometimes prohibit resale or modification, for instance. Licences like the GPL do the exact opposite: t…

Enforcing the GPL requires the state. Which is what I think he was aiming at. But then I don't understand how that's compatible with 1.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#142

Post by smonff »

jcora wrote: post #138
zekevermillion wrote: post #58

RMS' personal choices are important. I could not live with the same ethical purity myself when it comes to software choices (or for that matter, much of anything else). But I have been personally influenced by reading his essays on ethical topics. If he did not live consistent with his personal ethics, not only would he be much less persuasive, but also he would be at conflict with himself. the critic is right that s…

I have too been influenced by Stallman but I don't see why anyone should be above critique. I've developed as a person, politically, and think that my criticism may be useful to well-intentioned peopled, that's why I wrote this. > However, it does not follow that living in an ethical manner is pointless. I fully disagree. Personal ethics is only important with interpersonal relationships. Anything political transcend…

Criticizing Stallman of the "GNU/"Linux precision is like criticizing a plumber of using pipes.

The guy is just doing it's job and he is doing it quite well!

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#143

Post by smonff »

cbdfghh wrote: post #72

IMHO, Stallman made two mistakes: 1. He moved into politics (which is in my HO, one of the failure points of a lot of tech people. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but certain people have more talent at politics than others, and certain people have more talents at code than others). He's a great programmer, and could have pushed the FSF community directly by committing and improving code. And even if he can't code…

>And how did his political rants help the FSF (and the Free Software movement as a whole) lately?

It's ridiculous. His political statements at rms.org are clearly separated from the FSF stuff. The guy is free to think what he like, practice dance or whatever would please him. And actually his political views are quite coherent with the political ideology of the Free Software movement. And in the same time you cannot remove the fact that he actually created the FSF and GPL.

>He doesn't let the FSF be larger than him. Who's their 2nd in command?

I read the FSF news and information bulletins since something 2016, I don't remind receiving things "signed by RMS". Do you really think that this guy is obsessed by being the number 1 and that there is a number 2? This is a non-profit organisation, with people working for a cause, not a tyrannical political party with people fighting for power.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#144

Post by smonff »

Ace17 wrote: post #89
greyman wrote: post #14

> Stallman's rhetoric is filled with this problematic logic on all layers: from trying to correct other people's terminology Yes, this is my main obstacle accepting RMS. In my opinion, he took the word "free", made a term "free software", and described it in accordance with his agenda, while what he advocated only partially conforms to the meaning of the word "free" or "freedom". There are certainly licenses offering…

> There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. More freedom to who? Users, distributors, maintainers, vendors, service providers? You can't guarantee complete freedom to each of them simultaneously. For example, allowing distributors to do everything they want (e.g not providing source code) will prevent users to do everything they want (e.g modifying the program). So it makes no sense to talk abou…

>More freedom to who?

In the same way that a a very inexperienced french candidate for presidency is claiming that he will "liberate France by the work", ear "deregulate the working laws and make possible for companies to get rid of the employees whenever they want without any compensation". Freedom for employers.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#145

Post by throwaway729 »

spangry wrote: post #110
throwaway729 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many criticisms of the various freedoms embodied by Stallmanism's notion of free software (to borrow a term from the article). A thorough rebuttal of the entire viewpoint requires, IMO: 1. An ardent defense of capitalism and private property. 2. A critique of open source as a superior software development methodology. You'll find shades of (1) in various defenses of competing open source licenses (e.g. BSD)…

Why would (1) be necessary? GPL software is not consigned to the public domain or ownership automatically transferred to the FSF. It is still the property of the original developer, who are simply distributing and licensing its use only to those who comply with a certain set of conditions. Proprietary licences will sometimes prohibit resale or modification, for instance. Licences like the GPL do the exact opposite: t…

I stated that (1) and (2) constitute a thorough critique Stallman's worldview re: software, which IMO is quite a bit more than just the GPL.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#146

Post by WhitneyLand »

chippy wrote: post #129
WhitneyLand wrote: post #88

Ideologue, idealist, zealot, weird person? All fine with me. I don't like that he starts with some good ideas, but then slippery slopes his way to see existential threats to our life liberty and happiness. It starts out making sense and takes on an air of paranoia.

Although it's interesting to see the types of threats he has outlined in the past and how at the time when he was saying it people were calling them paranoid, and looking back we can see that he wasn't paranoid, but on point and predictive. Perhaps the things we think are paranoia now are similar. They may not be apparent, but perhaps they are similarly on point and predictive.

I think we agree more than disagree about how paranoia can become reality. The Snowden fallout rewired my thinking, and I'm still recovering from/reconciling the election.

But some Stallman stuff I see as hyperbole or just wrong.

For example he would label a hobbyist creating a compression utility and choosing to keep code private:

- anti-social

- an instrument of unjust power

- disrespectful of the freedom of others

He makes no distinction between government oppression or megacorp monopolies, and 1 person making personal choices. In reality things fall on a spectrum.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#147

Post by gkya »

phpnode wrote: post #130
gkya wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, want it or not GNU/ is a big part of Linux distros, at least until a distro with an alternative userland and c library makes it to the top. And even then most of open source has some GNU somewhere in the foundation.

The insistence that Linux be called GNU/Linux when even Linus calls it Linux is exactly the kind of behaviour that alienates people who would otherwise align with them. There is also no requirement that a Linux distribution includes any GNU software at all, should we refer to them as e.g Busybox/Linux?

Linux is not called GNU/Linux, but most of the distros need be because the three major components are the GNU userland, the Linux kernel and the distro's utilites and customisations.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#149

Post by smonff »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #74
swhipple wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add on to your point, this is called the 'paradox of freedom' -- that you cannot have both unlimited freedom and ensure freedom for the future. At the end of WWII, Karl Popper defended state interventionism with an argument citing the paradox of tolerance [1], and claimed ensuring a tolerant society in the name of tolerance, even when paradoxically intolerant. A parallel argument can be made in Stallman's case for…

That's a general point, but I think it missed the criticism that the FSF's definition of software freedom fails on its own terms. In practice the "freedom" is exclusive to a highly educated and exclusive technocracy. The same freedoms are not available to the general public. This may seem pedantic, but IMO it undermines the argument about software freedom, because Stallman has never shown the slightest interest in ma…

>Stallman has never shown the slightest interest in making software that the general public can modify, or in designing, promoting, or doing anything at all to encourage the existence of such software.

Define "general public". As far as I remember, Stallman was a MIT hacker working on stuff like compilers. It is not exactly the kind of thing the "general public" want to know about.

He did some significant parts of Emacs. 30 years after it's creation, this piece of software still exists, has been modified by thousand of people, including non-programmers.

Stallman is not only a software hacker. He is a "hacker", and hacked a piece of law that is a serious little trick that actually created a revolution. Torvalds hacked on the hardware/kernel part under the basic law hack and things started. That's a real success!

The arguments about terminology "GNU/" VS "Linux" are fun but I think we underestimate the law hack.

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